Review: Summer Infant Slumber Buddy Frankie The Frog

I got into some pretty bad habits with Erin quite early on when it came to day time sleeping. I loved having her fall asleep on me and as she was premature, I didn’t want to put her upstairs on her own at such a young age. It wasn’t until she was nearly three months old that I figured that I needed to change her sleeping habits.

As Erin had gotten so used to sleeping on me downstairs she did not go to sleep upstairs on her own very easily. If I put her down already asleep she would stay that way for about 20 minutes then wake up and realise I wasn’t there then cry but not go back to sleep. If I put her down awake she would realise and not go to sleep at all because she’d cry for me. I know it was my own fault but I needed to do something.

I had been looking at a couple of different options for sleep aids but finally decided on this. Frankie the Frog is made by the company Summer and different animals are available, such as a bee and a butterfly. The reason why I chose this instead of Ewan the Dreamsheep was the price to be honest. Frankie cost £14.99 instead of the £29.99 that Ewan costs.

Frankie the Frog is designed to help your child to sleep in a few different ways. He has a night light function where he projects stars and moons in either blue, green or amber as well as playing heartbeat sounds or songs/ nature sounds. The lights can be used at the same time as either the heartbeat function or the songs.

Unfortunately I was a little disappointed upon taking Frankie out of his box. The majority of the product is a really soft, green plush frog and this part of the design is lovely. However, Frankie’s back is made from a really hard plastic. This product is designed to either be placed on a bedside table or be attached to a cot by the velcro strap so it shouldn’t really be near your baby at any time. However, it would be nice if this was something Erin could cuddle now and again and associate it with bedtime but the hard plastic would not be nice for her.

Luckily, Frankie’s features are better than his hard plastic back. There are three different buttons on Frankie’s back which control each of the three different features. The buttons are quite small and have small pictures to describe what each button does.

The stars that are projected are fantastic. Even in the day time where our bedroom isn’t the darkest these stars show up on the wall. They’re even better in the pitch black. Erin has shown a clear preference for the blue stars compared to the red for some reason and she doesn’t seem to mind the green stars. I tried her with each colour by moving them around and seeing which she followed more. Seeing as she followed the blue stars more I always stick to using them now instead of other colours.

One of the main reasons why I bought this product was the heartbeat feature. I had heard that hearing a heartbeat makes babies think about when they were in the womb and it is supposed to relax them. I have to say that Erin is certainly more relaxed when these sounds are being played.

The songs/ nature sounds feature is pretty horrible and that’s a real shame. One of Erin’s toys ‘My Pal Violet’ has a lullaby feature and the songs played are amazing so I was hoping for the same kind of thing with this product. I was so wrong. Frankie only plays three lullabies but they sound more like elevator/ on hold music. It’s absolutely terrible! The songs don’t last very long and then it switches to the nature sounds which are just okay. I’m not the biggest fan of them but Erin doesn’t seem to mind when they’re on.

The really good thing about this product is the 15 minute auto shut off. This means that I am able to put any feature on for Erin while she’s trying to get to sleep/ nodding off and I don’t have to worry about going back upstairs to turn it off without disturbing her. This feature is absolutely perfect and I think it’s a super idea and something really helpful for parents.

Frankie runs on 3x AAA batteries which come included with the product.

Frankie the Frog has helped with Erin’s day time sleeping but it hasn’t fixed things completely. Erin will sleep upstairs sometimes on her own but not all of the time which is a shame. I’m hopeful that the longer we use this the better her sleeping gets. I think she’ll associate the heartbeat sounds with nap/ sleep time which will in turn, help her to fall asleep upstairs. While Frankie the Frog isn’t perfect, I am quite pleased with the results so far and the price isn’t too bad either!